# Inconsistency-aware Uncertainty Estimation for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.08762 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08762/

## Key facts

- Cited by 61 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 41 of its 66 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Oct 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [Simple and Scalable Predictive Uncertainty Estimation using Deep Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01474/) (2016)
- [What Uncertainties Do We Need in Bayesian Deep Learning for Computer Vision?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04977/) (2017)
- [V-Net: Fully Convolutional Neural Networks for Volumetric Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04797/) (2016)
- [RandAugment: Practical automated data augmentation with a reduced search space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13719/) (2019)
- [FixMatch: Simplifying Semi-Supervised Learning with Consistency and Confidence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07685/) (2020)
- [MixMatch: A Holistic Approach to Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02249/) (2019)
- [Temporal Ensembling for Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02242/) (2016)
- [Virtual Adversarial Training: A Regularization Method for Supervised and Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03976/) (2017)
- [ADVENT: Adversarial Entropy Minimization for Domain Adaptation in Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12833/) (2018)
- [UNet++: Redesigning Skip Connections to Exploit Multiscale Features in Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05074/) (2019)
- [Uncertainty-aware Self-ensembling Model for Semi-supervised 3D Left Atrium Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.07034/) (2019)
- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with Cross-Consistency Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09005/) (2020)
- [Probabilistic Backpropagation for Scalable Learning of Bayesian Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.05336/) (2015)
- [Aleatoric uncertainty estimation with test-time augmentation for medical image segmentation with convolutional neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.07356/) (2018)
- [CE-Net: Context Encoder Network for 2D Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.02740/) (2019)
- [Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation through Dual-task Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.04448/) (2020)
- [DeepOrgan: Multi-level Deep Convolutional Networks for Automated Pancreas Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.06448/) (2015)
- [Shape-aware Semi-supervised 3D Semantic Segmentation for Medical Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.10732/) (2020)
- [Transformation Consistent Self-ensembling Model for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.00348/) (2019)
- [Reducing the Hausdorff Distance in Medical Image Segmentation with Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.10030/) (2019)
- [Structured and Efficient Variational Deep Learning with Matrix Gaussian Posteriors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.04733/) (2016)
- [Uncertainty-aware multi-view co-training for semi-supervised medical image segmentation and domain adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16806/) (2020)
- [Assessing Reliability and Challenges of Uncertainty Estimations for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.03338/) (2019)
- [Deep Co-Training for Semi-Supervised Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11233/) (2019)
- [Multi-Task Attention-Based Semi-Supervised Learning for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.12303/) (2019)
- [Universal Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.10323/) (2018)
- [Double-Uncertainty Weighted Method for Semi-supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.09298/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 61)

- [Bidirectional Copy-Paste for Semi-Supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.00673/) (2023)
- [Learning with Limited Annotations: A Survey on Deep Semi-Supervised Learning for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.14191/) (2022)
- [A review of uncertainty quantification in medical image analysis: probabilistic and non-probabilistic methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06873/) (2023)
- [NP-Match: When Neural Processes meet Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01066/) (2022)
- [MutexMatch: Semi-Supervised Learning with Mutex-Based Consistency Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14316/) (2022)
- [MagicNet: Semi-Supervised Multi-Organ Segmentation via Magic-Cube Partition and Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.14310/) (2022)
- [Rethinking Bayesian Deep Learning Methods for Semi-Supervised Volumetric Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.09293/) (2022)
- [UPL-SFDA: Uncertainty-aware Pseudo Label Guided Source-Free Domain Adaptation for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.10244/) (2023)
- [PA-Seg: Learning from Point Annotations for 3D Medical Image Segmentation using Contextual Regularization and Cross Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.05669/) (2022)
- [Label-Efficient Deep Learning in Medical Image Analysis: Challenges and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12484/) (2023)
- [Orthogonal Annotation Benefits Barely-supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13090/) (2023)
- [Constructing and Exploring Intermediate Domains in Mixed Domain Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.08951/) (2024)
- [Semi-supervised Segmentation of Histopathology Images with Noise-Aware Topological Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16447/) (2023)
- [Cascaded Multi-path Shortcut Diffusion Model for Medical Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12223/) (2024)
- [SDCL: Students Discrepancy-Informed Correction Learning for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16728/) (2024)
- [3D Medical Image Segmentation with Sparse Annotation via Cross-Teaching between 3D and 2D Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.16256/) (2023)
- [U-Netmer: U-Net meets Transformer for medical image segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01401/) (2023)
- [Not Every Side Is Equal: Localization Uncertainty Estimation for Semi-Supervised 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10390/) (2023)
- [Uncertainty-aware Cross-training for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09014/) (2025)
- [MetaSSL: A General Heterogeneous Loss for Semi-Supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.01144/) (2025)
- [3D Vessel Segmentation with Limited Guidance of 2D Structure-agnostic Vessel Annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03299/) (2023)
- [NP-SemiSeg: When Neural Processes meet Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.02866/) (2023)
- [An Evidential-enhanced Tri-Branch Consistency Learning Method for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07032/) (2024)
- [The Devil is in the Statistics: Mitigating and Exploiting Statistics Difference for Generalizable Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11356/) (2024)
- [EPL: Evidential Prototype Learning for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06181/) (2024)
- [Deep Learning for Pancreas Segmentation: a Systematic Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.16313/) (2024)
- [Cut-Paste Consistency Learning for Semi-Supervised Lesion Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.00191/) (2022)
- [Lung Nodule Segmentation and Uncertain Region Prediction with an Uncertainty-Aware Attention Mechanism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08416/) (2023)
- [Uncertainty and Energy based Loss Guided Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01640/) (2025)
- [Balancing Multi-Target Semi-Supervised Medical Image Segmentation with Collaborative Generalist and Specialists](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.00862/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In semi-supervised medical image segmentation, most previous works draw on the common assumption that higher entropy means higher uncertainty. In this paper, we investigate a novel method of estimating uncertainty. We observe that, when assigned different misclassification costs in a certain degree, if the segmentation result of a pixel becomes inconsistent, this pixel shows a relative uncertainty in its segmentation. Therefore, we present a new semi-supervised segmentation model, namely, conservative-radical network (CoraNet in short) based on our uncertainty estimation and separate self-training strategy. In particular, our CoraNet model consists of three major components: a conservative-radical module (CRM), a certain region segmentation network (C-SN), and an uncertain region segmentation network (UC-SN) that could be alternatively trained in an end-to-end manner. We have extensively evaluated our method on various segmentation tasks with publicly available benchmark datasets, including CT pancreas, MR endocardium, and MR multi-structures segmentation on the ACDC dataset. Compared with the current state of the art, our CoraNet has demonstrated superior performance. In addition, we have also analyzed its connection with and difference from conventional methods of uncertainty estimation in semi-supervised medical image segmentation.